


we will what we must

by toomuchplor



Series: Eamespreg [11]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anxiety, Domestic, M/M, Mpreg, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Arthur needs five minutes alone, but doesn't get them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we will what we must

Arthur goes into the bathroom and closes the door behind him. The lock is the sort where you push the knob and turn it a little, so he pushes the knob and turns it a little. Then he waits a breathless moment, listening and waiting and vigilant.

Nothing happens.

Arthur goes over to the toilet, because he really did need to use it. He pees, then puts the lid down. The hinge squeaks in protest, unaccustomed to this position. Arthur washes his hands; he does not sing 'Twinkle Twinkle' as he does so, because he is an adult man who knows when his hands are sufficiently lathered.

He pats his hands dry on the towel, then tugs it off the towel bar and folds it, hangs it up again. It's beige. It was once more of a buff colour, he thinks. It's got several small smeary finger marks on it. Arthur pulls it off the towel bar again and fetches a fresh towel from under the sink, hangs this one up instead. He drops the dirty towel into the hamper by the door.

Arthur then plants his hands on the bathroom counter and looks at himself in the mirror. Circles under his eyes, a slight helpless twitch in the small muscles in front of his ears, and faintly glinting silver threads of hair at his temples. 

It's quiet. Arthur breathes it in.

It's rare that Arthur's escape attempts to the bathroom go unnoticed. If it's not one of their (many) children rattling the knob and demanding the use of the toilet or of Arthur's attention, it's Eames pounding on the door with the side of his fist saying "I know what you're doing in there, darling, and it's not what you're pretending, and furthermore you need to get back out here and either get the poo off Otis' back or keep Bert from murdering Lucas over these godforsaken stuffed bears."

Probably Arthur's only managed to slip away now because things are actually relatively calm for once; Otis is napping, and so is George. Bert is building something out of lego and Lucas is (and has been, for a few days) a purple sparkly dragon named Fiona. Eames is baking apple popovers. The house is cozy, only a little untidy for once, and no one is sick or injured or in a nasty mood.

Arthur's just — done. Tapped. He scrubs his hands over his face and tries to summon a little more paternal patience, love, and devotion, but the well feels empty today. He ponders telling Eames that he needs to go out for a run, something, and then abruptly remembers that he's not supposed to run anymore, not until they can work out whether he’s got placenta previa or if it was just a bad ultrasound.

He's pretty sure pregnancy’s not supposed to be this hard. It’s certainly never looked this hard from the other side of things.

Also, Arthur doesn't understand how he's actually hit a wall when all he's doing is looking after small children, and he used to look after grown people in mortal peril without breaking a sweat.

Eames could probably make Arthur feel better. If Arthur went into the kitchen and nudged his chin onto Eames' shoulder from behind, showed Eames the same expression he's showing himself in the mirror, Eames would almost certainly abandon his baking. He’d turn round and circle his arms around Arthur's middle, pull him in tight, kiss Arthur's greying temple. He'd ask what's wrong, and Arthur would try to articulate it, fail, and Eames would smile with half his mouth and say, _oh, darling, go have a lie-down, it's fine, it's normal, you're tired_.

But Arthur doesn't like being the one who's always drained before Eames even starts to seem frazzled. He stays here, in the bathroom, and keeps trying to will himself into being a better parent. While he hides from his children.

It's a gentle slip of motion, first, subtle enough that Arthur thinks for a moment that his t-shirt is just resettling between his skin and the lip of the bathroom counter. He looks down, frowning, because — well. His t-shirt is unwrinkled and flat, and the sensation wasn't against his skin, actually.

Arthur stares, blinks, and decides he's just entered the hallucinatory phase of exhaustion. But it happens again.

"Oh," says Arthur, getting it. "Oh." He tugs up his shirt and stares at the swell of his belly, though of course he can't see anything happening yet. He's seen Eames in this state often enough to know that it'll be a while before someone else could even feel the movement within, let alone see the glide of tiny limb under taut-stretched skin.

And of course Eames always mentioned it, when he first started feeling these early flutters, and of course Arthur didn't doubt that it was happening, but — he had no idea, how strange and yet intimate a moment it was. Arthur abruptly realizes he doesn't have to tell Eames anything. He doesn't have to say.

This could be his small secret, this little series of bubble-popping nudges inside. This could be between him and this weird aquatic companion he's got, and Arthur could go about his life with no one the wiser.

"I came in here to be alone, you know," Arthur says to his middle.

_Flicker, nudge, bubble_ , responds Arthur's belly.

"The other ones just pull at the doorknob and scream," Arthur continues. "You seem to have better manners, so far."

Faintly there's the ping of Eames' egg-timer and then Arthur can hear Eames requiring the boys to keep a safe perimeter while he pulls the hot pastries from the oven. Bert is loudly staking a claim on 'the big one with the hole that is shaped like an L' and Lucas is roaring his disapprobation because he may be a sparkly purple dragon named Fiona but L is still his letter, dammit: _roar, roar_.

_It's a V, not an L_ , Eames is saying, _see how when you turn it, it's a V. V for Very Biggest Son, and this one is a heart-shaped hole for how Mummy Loves His Dragon, and I told you hands behind your backs you little grabby buggers, Mummy will not be sorry if you burn your fingers touching before I say you can._

Arthur exhales and splays his fingers over his belly, gives a very gentle nudge back. He doesn't know how they're going to manage, but if there's one thing he's learned in his five years of fatherhood, it's that you make room for things you didn't know you even had in you. You make room for endless games of Candyland and you make room for one more reading of Where the Wild Things Are and you make room for discarded sticky bits of graham crackers in the hollow of your hand in the middle of a restaurant. 

You make room for your boyfriend to be a better parent than you are, grudgingly, and you even more grudgingly make room for yourself to take a nap like your infant sons do, on a Saturday after lunch.

Arthur unlocks the door and goes to the kitchen. The big boys are seated at the table, kicking each other energetically but good-naturedly while their mouths are full of sweet apples from the tree in the yard, cinnamon, sugar, butter. Eames is stacking the rest of the batch onto cooling racks. He's swaybacked already, because five months along is a lot more apparent when you're having your fifth baby. He looks up when Arthur comes closer. "Oh, I thought you went for a kip," he says, surprised. "Did we wake you?"

"No," says Arthur, "I'm going in a minute, though." 

He doesn't nudge his chin onto Eames' shoulder and doesn't make that face at Eames, but Eames quirks his mouth and kisses Arthur's temple anyway. "Hiding," he says, "and it's only Saturday afternoon."

"I can't run," says Arthur, "and I can't hide either, it turns out." He kisses Eames' lips and though he didn't plan to, he gives his belly another little rub and lifts his eyebrows to convey his meaning. "She's saying hello."

Eames looks absolutely stunned for a satisfying moment, like he's half-forgotten Arthur's even pregnant, and then his face comes over with a weird mixture of envy and fondness. "You don't look as panicked as I thought," he says. "Coming round to the idea that you're going to be a mum?"

"You're insufferable," Arthur says, meaning it, "and I'm still a much better driver, so shut it."

"Popover?" Eames asks brightly, beaming, because he still likes a provoked Arthur better than almost anything in the world.

"No," says Arthur, "nap." He hesitates and glances over at the boys again; they are still blissfully wrapped up in their sugary snacks and being companionably rough with each other. Lucas' dragon tail is hanging down to the floor; Bert's got a pair of old 3D glasses on. "Care to join me?"

"Well," says Eames, wiping his hands on a tea towel, "we're already in about as much trouble as we could be in, I suppose." He tosses the towel to the counter.

The trick is to look utterly casual, which Eames knows as well as Arthur does. The children smell subterfuge in an instant. Arthur goes first, without so much as speaking to the boys. A moment later he hears Eames' step behind him on the staircase, and under that the ongoing cheerful chatter of Bert, the roaring and growling of Lucas-Fiona.

The door's lock is the kind where you turn the little button in the middle of the doorknob. Arthur lets Eames get it.

**Author's Note:**

> If it seems a bit like these stories are repeating themselves a little — well, they are. Most of the bits I'm posting are off-the-cuff chatfic that I've tidied up, and I've discovered that when I let my brain start rambling it often stumbles over the same themes and ideas. Yay? Hoping to take some of the suggestions I've gotten on Tumblr (toomuchplor.tumblr.com, come play!) and expand the palette a bit in the future!
> 
> Oh, I know some of you will want to know what's up with Arthur and not being allowed to run. [Here's a link to an article on placenta previa](http://www.babycenter.com/0_placenta-previa_830.bc). Don't be scared, the internet is an alarmist (much like Arthur, and Arthur's ob-gyn).


End file.
